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IBM wins on demand contract for Blue Gene

Updated: 5:57 p.m. ET Aug. 4, 2004

NEW YORK - International Business Machines Corp. <IBM.N> on Wednesday said that the Mayo Clinic will become its first on demand client to use the Blue Gene super computer.

Mayo Clinic is a not-for-profit organization based in Rochester, Minnesota, with medical and research facilities. It will use Blue Gene for simulations to find causes and cures for diseases.

Bill Zeitler, senior vice president of Systems and Technology group at IBM, said the application of super computing technology is going to lead to radical breakthroughs in medical science.

On demand computing is the marketing term IBM uses to describe a way for its customers to buy computers and related services as they need it, instead of purchasing expensive and powerful computers up-front that they may or may not fully use.

The concept is somewhat similar to time sharing of a vacation home or an executive jet.

Armonk, New York-based IBM, the world's largest computer services company, has been looking at ways to boost its slow growth in revenue and profits. On demand computing is one of its focus areas.

"This could be a very large market in terms of the services and hardware opportunity," said Zeitler.

IBM currently has two super computer centers dedicated to on demand computing. The two centers put together have a capacity of 17 teraflops, or 17 trillion mathematical operations per second.

Zeitler said that over the next two years, IBM's on demand super computing capacity could grow a 100 times to some 1,700 teraflops.

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